


Prompt: Family Night

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: BatFam Week 2018 [6]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bat Family, Batfam Week 2018, Batfamily Feels, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Damian Wayne has a heart, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Family Fluff, Gen, Hurt Bruce Wayne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 17:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15562803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: BatFam Week 2018, Day Seven. Prompt: Family Night.Straight-up fluff with the fam. However, to all the 90s children out there, I apologize for the ending.





	Prompt: Family Night

Bruce cracked open one eye to peer at the tousled black head hovering over him.

“It is now eight o’clock, Father,” Damian announced. When Bruce didn’t respond, Damian sniffed and added, “Eight o’clock _post meridian_. You have been asleep for nine hours.”

Bruce grunted and let his eye close again.

“Father.” No answer from Bruce. An insistent finger poked his grizzled cheek. “Father.”

“What?” Bruce mumbled.

“You have been sleeping an excessive amount lately,” Damian said, his tone cautious as he placed each carefully chosen word after the next.

Bruce grunted. Of course he was. What else was there for him to do?

“Given that your normal sleep patterns are less than desirable, I didn’t want to mention, but...” Damian clicked his tongue softly, not scolding or irritated, but quietly enough to be considered contemplative.

“Father?”

A heavy sigh. “Hmm?”

“Pennyworth is concerned that you are exhibiting classic signs of a depressive episode.” A pause. “ _Are_ you?”

Bruce wasn’t sure how to respond, so he didn’t.

“Very well.” Bruce’s head shifted as Damian adjusted his pillow. “I will tell Pennyworth you have awoken. Please don’t forget to use your bell.”

And then Damian left just as silently as he had arrived. Bruce opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, contemplating for a moment the payoff for staying awake. He hadn’t eaten all day. But then, he wasn’t really hungry, and the idea of forcing himself to stay awake when he couldn’t leave his bed sounded maddening. So he slept.

When Bruce awoke next, he was being watched. Alfred the Cat stared back at Bruce with golden, lidded eyes from his comfortable perch atop Bruce’s chest.

“Shoo,” Bruce muttered.

Alfred flicked his ear, unbothered.

Bruce opened his mouth to yell for Damian when suddenly his youngest was there in the doorway. Alfred hopped down and padded away.

“You fell asleep again.”

Bruce thought that was a really judgey tone to take with an injured man. He was about to say so when another figure appeared behind Damian.

“Hey, B,” Dick chirped. “Good, you’re up.”

Bruce’s eldest strode into the room and bent over the bed to smack a kiss onto Bruce’s forehead. Bruce frowned.

“Dick?”

“The one and only.” There was a rustle of paper bags as Dick set down the load he was carrying on the floor out of Bruce’s sight. “Dames, pick out a movie. _Not_ 101 Dalmatians.”

Damian muttered a rude reply but disappeared out of the doorway. Dick knelt at the head of Bruce’s bed where Bruce could see him. “Damian says this is day five for you. I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”

Bruce flicked his eyebrow in a manner that suggested a shrug. “The drugs have been alright.” Even in the few hours he was awake, he felt like he was floating through a dream.

Dick smiled, then tilted away and began studying the control panel built into the sideboard. “Let’s sit you up, B. Time for a new view.”

“I don’t want t—” Bruce began, then roared with pain as Dick hit a button and sent him rocketing into an upright position.

“What are you trying to do, break him further?!” Tim demanded over Dick’s babbled apologies. Bruce ground his teeth together and blinked back tears as his middle child strode into view.

“Don’t worry, B, the one without brain damage is here.” Plastic pieces rattled against cardboard as Tim shoved a pile of boxes into Dick’s arms. “I’ll take care of this. Go stand over there. Or better yet, go help the brat. He was trying to decide between Madagascar and The Secret Life of Pets, and I’m not doing either of those.”

Dick mumbled out another apology, then left. “It’s like four buttons,” Tim muttered as he crouched by the headboard. “How can you screw up four buttons? They literally have arrows.”

A sigh of relief hissed through Bruce’s teeth as the bed whirred and slowly lowered into a reclined position. Once the bed was adjusted, Tim came around and sat on the edge of the mattress.

“I’m not broken,” Bruce said.

Tim looked puzzled, then smiled. “I know. But you were once, and no one wants a repeat. Besides, you’re not exactly fixed right now, are you?”

He hesitated, always the reserved son, then placed a hand on Bruce’s forehead and rubbed a thumb along the crease carved into the skin. Bruce blinked slowly, a drugged-up cat basking in the warmth. Then the air shifted, and Tim lifted his hand as he stood to greet his sister.

“Flamin’,” Cass said by way of greeting, holding up a monster bag of Cheetos.

“Alfred didn’t see you?” Bruce asked. Cass’s only reply was to giggle as she dumped her load—Bruce could hear crinkling plastic, but also rattling glass within the recycled totes—next to his end table.

“No, of course not,” he mumbled, answering his own question. Even Alfred’s bat-like household sonar wouldn't be able to pick up his girl if she didn’t want him to.

“Silly,” Cass said, tapping his nose. Bruce quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t stretch.” He rolled his eyes, making her laugh again.

Bruce had to admit that it did feel nice to sit up for a change. He felt like he hadn’t seen his own bedroom in weeks. 

“We couldn’t decide, so we have options,” Dick announced as he returned to the room, Damian right behind, each grasping several blu-ray cases.

Bruce blinked groggily against the medication, trying to figure out if he had forgotten something or hadn’t known it to begin with.

“Why are you here?” Bruce asked, then fought a grimace. Great, just chase them off, why don’t you. Idiot.

“It’s Family Night,” Dick answered, as if that were a regular thing that they did. 

At Bruce’s puzzled look, Dick smiled and moved to help Cass unload her bags. “You here, unable to patrol or run away or hide in your office? How could we pass that up?” he teased.

"Never fear, the life of the party is here!” Bruce’s attention whipped to the door as Jason strode in, pizza boxes precariously stacked in his arms. “I expect to be fully reimbursed for this, old man. We don’t all have a money bank deep enough to swim in. Dick, take these.”

“Did you get meat lov—”

“What about vege—”

“Open it, is there white ch—”

Jason passed off the food to his clamoring siblings, then strode to the bed and glared down at Bruce. “You made me look like an idiot, you know. I had to hear from freaking _Jordan_ that you banged up your back again. How am I supposed to have any credibility as the puppet master of Gotham’s underworld if I have to hear things third-hand from _Hal Jordan_ , huh? Jerk.”

Bruce didn’t miss that Jason had been squeezing his shoulder during his entire tirade, so he merely blinked lazily, making Jason snort and roll his eyes. 

“Whatever.” Jason looked away, then scowled and stormed off toward his brothers. “Brat, that better not be Madagascar I see in your hand, because I am not—”

The deadened silence of Bruce’s room was replaced with bright laughter and playful ribbing as his children set up their night. Bruce drifted in and out of full cognizance, and was always bemused by what he found when he came to himself again.

His children swarming around him, making his king-sized bed feel small and cozy as they piled on with their greasy plates of pizza. The wind-chime passing of the Coke and beer bottles, with a laughing game of keep-away from Bruce. ( _Bruce, you’re **on drugs**. You get water. Eat your nasty garbage pizza._ ) It was not nasty garbage pizza. Choosing everything-with-olives was a defense strategy when dining with five bottomless pits.

At one point, he was jarred from his careful nibbling of a slice of cheese bread by his mattress shaking as his children leapt to their feet in time with the television and sang (deliberately off-key, he suspected) about chasing a line where the sky met the sea and how far they would go. Even Cass knew the words. He found her dramatic gestures surprisingly moving.

At another point, Bruce’s legs were transformed into a tabletop over which a vicious game of Catan was waged. (Not as vicious as the winner-plays lightning round tournament of Operation that followed, though. As the table, Bruce may or may not have had a hand—or knee—in some of the outcomes.)

Bruce wasn’t sure exactly when everyone finished their competitive blood feuds and settled in next to him. Somewhere in the second movie, he thought, maybe around the waterfall scene. It was a good scene. He remembered watching it with Dick when his boy was still just a boy, and the way Dick’s young eyes had gone wide with concern. (”She’ll be alright,” Bruce had whispered. “You’ll see.” It was the same thing Dick whispered to Damian now.)

Regardless of when the night’s agenda had shifted or how much elbowing and complaining it had taken to get them there, the room was quiet now, every eye in the room trained on the TV. Every eye but Bruce’s.

Bruce was watching his children.

He wanted to remember them as they were right this second, each tangled with the next. He wanted this memory ready to take out and look at in a week or two, when they were all at each other’s throats again. Bruce wanted to remember the way Tim sprawled at the end of the bed, his head on Alfred the Cat’s back and his hair curling softly at his shirt collar. He wanted to remember Cass tucked under Jason’s arm, eyes blinking sleepily, and her hand tucked into Bruce’s palm. Bruce wanted to remember Jason’s cheek nestled atop Cass’s head, his gaze open and more unguarded than Bruce had seen in a lifetime, and his feet resting on Tim’s legs in what had started as a joke and what had settled into an excuse for physical contact that didn’t end in bloodshed. He wanted to remember Dick taking up more than his fair share of the bed, spine twisted so his head could rest in Damian’s lap, nearly matching Alfred’s purrs as Damian absently stroked his hair. Bruce wanted to remember Damian tucked up against his side, no protestations about being treated like a child or posturing for the sake of pride.

Bruce bent his neck as far as his back would allow and whispered into his youngest’s ear, “Thank you for tonight.”

“Shhhh!” Damian hissed, eyes rapt on the screen and the long-anticipated reunion taking place. But he bumped his head against Bruce’s chest fondly and left it there, settling as the lone horn played.

And if every member of his rough-and-tumble vigilante family teared up as the old golden retriever crested that autumn hill, Bruce would remember but never tell. He merely smiled to himself and rested his cheek on his son’s head and squeezed his daughter’s hand as the irrepressible young pup sighed over the end to his incredible journey.

_At last, for the first time in my life, I was home._


End file.
